Top 40 Paul Merson Quotes

When you start drinking, everything goes out of the window. You don’t care about anything. You don’t even care about yourself.

I’ll take the accolades when they are there and I’ll take it on the chin when things aren’t great.

Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, unbelievable centre-forwards – but you could not say to them: ‘For the next three weeks I want you to play No 10 and thread the ball through the eye of a needle.’

I never worry what people think about me anymore. Just go out and say what you need to say. People worry about people so much.

There are not many players about who can go up front and be a target man, be strong, put his body in the way, score goals and then in the game, he can drop off and hit a 30-yard ball through the eye of a needle and knit play together.

When you play Leeds, you need players who are quick and who are capable of beating opponents as they like to set up one-v-one.

Hakim Ziyech has got a left foot that can open a can of worms, Timo Werner scores plenty of goals, Tammy Abraham looks like he’s getting better and then there’s Mason Mount. They’ve just got so much attacking talent.

If you want to be successful, you need consistency and if you don’t have it, you’ve got no chance.

When I first showed up at Villa I thought we had a weird old dressing room.

This is hard to say but I think Jurgen Klopp has been a bit blinkered at Liverpool.

I used to think I was a bad person, I’d drink and gamble a lot and I didn’t want to but I kept on doing it and ending back at the same place. It made me think ‘this can’t be right, I’m not that bad of a person’.

I played in an FA Cup final for Aston Villa and the manager went negative, sitting everyone behind the ball against Chelsea.

When you rotate, you have to get the balance right. When you rotate and you win, it’s great but when you rotate and you don’t win, that’s when the problems start.

But that’s why the fans liked me so much. ‘Cos I am one of them. If they were in one pub down the road, and there was a wine bar up that road, I’d be in the pub with the fans. That was me.

Divock Origi isn’t going to win Liverpool leagues, no disrespect. If he was better than Mohamed Salah or Roberto Firmino, he’d be playing every week.

If I can help one person by sharing my story then in my eyes it’s a success.

I keep my life to one day at a time.

I’ve lost millions. The money’s not the problem it’s the sanity. You go insane. As soon as the bets on you are like ‘what did I do that for?’ You search and search for the bet and then you think ‘why did I do it?’ Then the self-worth comes in and you hate it.

You do not want to be playing good teams and always let them have 70 per cent of the ball, and expect it to work every time. That does not happen often.

If you look at the world, there’s only maybe only Brazil or Argentina that can win a World Cup that aren’t in Europe.

I went to AA, which was a major help for me.

Legend is a term bandied about too much in football, but in Premier League terms Sergio Aguero is an absolute legend.

Everyone knows me from my time at Arsenal. No-one really remembers me at Boro or Villa.

I placed some silly wagers, sixty grand here, eighty grand there. I’d ring up a bookie and bet £10,000 on something like who would be the first batsman out at Lord’s that day. I was that off my head.

Football is decided on fine margins.

Being an addict is hard. It’s something you have got for the rest of your life.

There is one thing that will never change in football. The centre forward is only as good as the people that are giving him the ball, and the people that are giving him the ball are only as good as the centre forward they are giving it to.

If you have Robbie Williams and Elton John at Wembley in front of 100,000 people, it will be the best thing you’ve seen. They are entertainers, they fly off the adrenaline.

It’s alright people saying they get £100,000-a-week, they get paid well or whatever, but they want to play football.

But I was just a normal person really. You see, I didn’t get it in my head that I was just a professional footballer for Arsenal Football Club.

I have an illness. I have a mental illness. I’ve accepted that now. Before, I used to beat myself up all the time, but the more you talk about it, the more it takes the power out of it.

If you aren’t going to have a lot of the ball, you’ve got to play when you’ve got the ball, otherwise you end up giving it straight back and we start all over again.

Before, I would literally watch people ringing me trying to help me, but I wouldn’t take the calls. It’s the worst place to be, having that fear that it’s never going to get better. You have to talk.

I played at Aston Villa for four years and most of the time I loved it there, but typically it took me a while to settle in.

When you see your friends going out every Friday night, and earning two hundred quid at the building site, and you’re earning twenty-five pounds at Arsenal, and you have to stay in every Thursday, Friday, you know it is hard.

I was getting up in the morning and betting on Lithuanian under-20 basketball matches.

To work under Brendan Rodgers would certainly be a good move for Ainsley Maitland-Niles but the most important thing for the player is to go somewhere he can play in his preferred position, which is in midfield.

Never worry about what people think. That’s what drove me to drinking a lot of time, worrying about what people thought of me.

Agents in this day and age, they’re not just agents. They’re a parent, they’re a best friend, they’re a financial advisor, they book holidays, they go away with each other.

If I don’t have a bet or a drink today, then I’ve done well. And I can start again tomorrow.